


coda

by darling



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M, OR IS IT, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:21:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21898129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darling/pseuds/darling
Summary: '...always with you.'
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	coda

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i read banana fish a while ago and never watched the anime bc wow One Fear. but. i am always thinking about them. and all the anime posts really...dragged that out at /squints/ 2:20AM haha. so.  
> 2\. they deserved better. but . you know. yeah...yeah.

_\- - -_

_"and i would not regret loving you. of course i would not..."_   
  
  
  


_\- - -_

*

eiji waits.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  
  


sometimes on the train he watches the sun struggle its way across the glass and stone of the city and it strikes him quiet raw real and ghostly:

how 'dawn' is a breaking word.

  
  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  


and how isn't that just like ash. to let out all the light in the hundreds of pieces he was made of.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


these are the ways eiji sees ash: 

mist-filled how the morning clads the city like it knows its numberless secrets are too terrible to lay bare; sun-dewed how the same morning burns back burns bright burns soft like a whisper to a temple made of a fear that would be loveless if it was any less human; noon-skewed and high with the cape cod summer where normal is was a verb a gift a liminal space that never should have been so temporary; blue sky slatted with clouds making reasons for umbrellas and the concurrent storms built first with thunder and third or fourth but never last: so much sea; golden hour in the flecks of green irises like terms of endearments and post scripts that in cleverer hands would have been poems a thousand years living but instead are a thousand prayers drifting (the sea the sea the sea) and; midnight gone blue bruised black and bullet spattered where the blood morse codes silver-white instead of rust-red and cradles no one because there haven't been children here in quite some time and; yes,

dawn.

mist. secret. unveiled. locked up. broken out. vaulted from the earth. taken from the sky. 

dawn.

sometimes eiji looks at a window and sees a young man who isn't really there. eiji sees what eiji wants to see and maybe it's been a few years and the people who see eiji have stopped trying to change that. 

but then again, very few people see eiji anymore.

calls and texts. emails. all of these riddled with confusions such as 'come home'. but eiji looks at a window and smooths his calloused palm along the empty sill and can hardly breathe. come home?

the hand makes a fist for no one to see but the sun in new york city rises and maybe that's witness enough as eiji climbs into that window and sits the way he would sit to face a person who isn't there except that he is because he always is because ash can never not be there can never not be always --

\-- where eiji is.

he doesn't know when he starts to cry and he doesn't know when he stops, doesn't know much if he's honest -- a thing he cannot help but be despite his best efforts. eiji knows too well the irresponsibility of certain considerations: the flicker of a moment it would take to fall the wrong way, the absence of a backup plan if it didn't work, so on and so forth. eiji knows.

eiji also knows this: the phantom warmth of a smile impossibly tired and mired in hope it cannot name. 

in the open window, eiji cries and eiji stops crying; eiji cries again. asks to be forgiven. asks for impossible things. asks.

his hands remain empty. his heart too full. there is no bridge for the journey and the meeting he so desires.

out ahead of him, behind him, all around: new york. city of darkness. city of lights. city that never sleeps. before eiji first came here, he thought it strange but almost novel. now he finds himself unable to leave and understanding better: how many shadows are just your own, how many sunrises are gray not gold and so choose to illuminate rather different things, how many dreamless dreams are lodged like bullets in all the spaces denying the good in the world. 

and:

"i will wait."

who was it that once said: past the time you are gone i will remain for you will need someone to return to. or, eiji thinks, lifting his head to stare at the opposite side of the window, was it just something someone might have said? something he might have said? something he wanted to say?

ah.

"i'll wait," he repeats, draws his arm across his nose and sniffs and ignores the sharp ringing in his head and the ache that cannot settle. he cannot count the number of times people have seen fit to remind him of 'reality'. as if he could forget. as if he would be so disloyal or offensive with the heart in his care. 

a third time is this: eiji with one leg down on the interior of the building, and one leg on the outside. a third time is eiji saying 'i'll wait' and crumbling with the sun carding its pale fingers through his hair like some kind of apology, like it's trying to tell him: sorry i'm out here and you are in there, sorry for making you wait like this, sorry, sorry, i'm so sorry.

but even so, what eiji feels is a different word whispered and just as heavy at its core made of roots littered with secret stars and verses lain too soon to rest.

  
  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


always.

always.

always.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


"i wish you could see you how i do," eiji says and does not reach out, does not ask ash to tell him it's okay, does not move at all except to meet those eyes and dare to smile. a little. and say softer still, "until then, i will tell you what i see." 

"like what? a report?"

"no, stupid," eiji says and knows it's a rich thing to say to someone with ash's IQ but he also knows that ash knows he knows and so he's gratified to receive another smile. 

"oh?"

"mm."

eiji has the thought: i would like to hold your hand. and then: perhaps someday.

at ash's own side, ash's hand twitches and ash doesn't know why -- cannot let himself know why yet yet yet let himself know that against all odds, this single thing he is still capable of -- so he ignores it in light of what's already happening: proximity, honesty, and no particular expectations. 

though something curious radiates off of eiji.

when ash first saw him fly, he thought it might be threads of fate like some kind of god. he was reminded of certain poems and lost manuscripts suddenly found again and made whole not by the completeness of the reading but in immediacy: by the act of being sought and found altogether. seconds. it wasn't more than seconds; he knows.

also, somehow? forever. seconds of forever. he thinks that might apply to other things too and then stops thinking. 

in the here and now, he supposes maybe not threads so much as the sauntering wandering trails of dandelions. 

there: a wish. and there: another wish. there too: a wish.

ash can't remember the last time his wishes weren't steeped in a desperation that threatened to rot. he can't remember but he knows enough to recognize it: how just standing with eiji not-quite touching him is like something he has no simile for; has no reference; has nothing.

and well.

eiji is something.

"ash."

he blinks.

eiji gets this worried look that often seems crossed almost comically between concern and immutable ire for something beyond his control. he gets it most concerning ash, something ash actively ignores and something eiji himself is actively vaguely aware of; he chalks it up to wanting to protect him -- even from himself. 

if ash was a different person he might do more. but ash is ash. ash is ash and eiji is eiji and eiji who has no great expectations of ash tells him a story about paper cranes that became a dragon, tells him a story of forgotten gods made whole by the love of rain or moonlight, tells him a story very nearly about a boy and another boy with so much broken glass underfoot. 

but not quite.

he leaves it at gods even as eiji murmurs soft as sunset,

"i wish you could see."

ash, bemused but not holding his breath, says, "me too."

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


these are the ways eiji tells ash it's not over: new flowers with new meanings, hours under an umbrella in familiar places disregarding of the danger, notes in all of the books eiji associates with him and never mind that this is the new york public library,--

\-- love.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  
  
  


always.

  
  
  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


dawn. day. noon. evening. midnight. rain. snow. sun. clouds. storms. stars. the sea that would not have them. the sky that might be them. dawn. 

*

letters with nowhere to go as of yet: doing what winged words must. as the boy who flew and fell and tasted one summer what other things flight could mean. as that one word for ash lynx always seemed to -- seems to -- eiji does, eiji --

*

\-- waits.

  
  
  
  
  
  


*

_\- - -_

_"...love is not a regretting word."_

_\- - -_

*


End file.
